{"id":34992,"date":"2017-10-13T15:32:59","date_gmt":"2017-10-13T20:32:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=34992"},"modified":"2017-10-13T15:32:59","modified_gmt":"2017-10-13T20:32:59","slug":"terror-of-singular-they","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=34992","title":{"rendered":"Terror of singular 'they'"},"content":{"rendered":"<style> table {     border-collapse: collapse; } <\/p>\n<p>table, td, th {     border: 1px solid black; } <\/style>\n<p>Joining a crowd of other recent fraudsters, Paul Roberts and Deborah Briton returned from their Spanish vacation and subsequently turned in a completely fake claim against the Thomas Cook package-vacation company, alleging that their time in Spain had been ruined by stomach complaints for which the hotel and the company should be held liable. They sought more than $25,000 in damages for the fictional malady. The judge sentenced them to jail. And in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/law\/2017\/oct\/13\/couple-who-faked-holiday-sickness-claims-are-jailed\">this report of the case<\/a> my colleague Bob Ladd noticed that Sam Brown, the prosecuting attorney, showed himself to be so terrified of blundering into a singular <em>they<\/em> that he would not even risk using <em>they<\/em> with plural reference, preferring to utter a totally ungrammatical sentence: <\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>*Sam Brown, prosecuting, said: \"<u>Both defendants<\/u> knew that in issuing this claim <u>he or she<\/u> would be lying in order to support it.\"<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Beware of struggling to obey prescriptive injunctions that don't come naturally to you; they can warp your ability to use your native language sensibly. <!--more--><\/p>\n<p>And also beware of trying to cheat Spanish hoteliers with spurious claims of stomach trouble. They're onto the scam. One hotel in Mallorca (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2017\/jun\/24\/hotels-compensation-spain-cyprus-bogus-food-poisoning-claims\">see this story<\/a>) became suspicious about the way about 200 claims from among 9,000 guests were distributed among nationalities: <\/p>\n<table border cellpadding=\"6\">\n<tr>\n<th align=\"center\">United Kingdom<\/th>\n<th align=\"center\">Germany<\/th>\n<th align=\"center\">Netherlands<\/th>\n<th align=\"center\">Other<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td align=\"center\">200<\/td>\n<td align=\"center\">0<\/td>\n<td align=\"center\">0<\/td>\n<td align=\"center\">0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>Notice also this statistic concerning when the illness was first reported: <\/p>\n<table border cellpadding=\"6\">\n<tr>\n<th align=\"center\">While staying at hotel<\/th>\n<th align=\"center\">After returning to UK<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td align=\"center\">0<\/td>\n<td align=\"center\">200<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>And these data about exactly who did the reporting and made the claim: <\/p>\n<table border cellpadding=\"6\">\n<tr>\n<th align=\"center\">Reported by guest<\/th>\n<th align=\"center\">Professional claims company<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td align=\"center\">0<\/td>\n<td align=\"center\">200<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>Somewhat improbable statistically, the hotelier thought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joining a crowd of other recent fraudsters, Paul Roberts and Deborah Briton returned from their Spanish vacation and subsequently turned in a completely fake claim against the Thomas Cook package-vacation company, alleging that their time in Spain had been ruined by stomach complaints for which the hotel and the company should be held liable. They [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,27,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-and-the-law","category-singular-they","category-syntax"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34992"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34999,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34992\/revisions\/34999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}